The Galaxy S4: When a 16-GB phone is really an 8-GB phone

Shortly after Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone made its way into early buyers’ hands, complaints about its storage capacity began to fill the Web. The 16-GB model comes with just under 9 GB of free space – nearly half of it taken up with the operating system and pre-installed applications from Samsung and carriers.

CNet asked Samsung about this, and the company responded by conceding the S4 comes with significantly more software than last year’s S3:

In a statement sent to CNET, Samsung says, “For the Galaxy S4 16GB model, approximately 6.85GB occupies [the] system part of internal memory, which is 1GB bigger than that of the Galaxy S3, in order to provide [a] high resolution display and more powerful features to our consumers.”

I’m not sure how the S4’s 1080p display would impact storage that much — although the images and assets used in each app would have to be higher-res — but the statement continues, “To offer the ultimate mobile experience to our users, Samsung provides [a] microSD slot on Galaxy S4 for extension of memory.”

Of course, there’s a catch. Yep, the S4’s storage can be expanded by as much as 64 GB with a memory card, but that space can’t be used for applications. If you install a lot of apps – particularly games, which can sometimes take up a gigabyte or more of space – you can quickly gobble up the onboard storage. After that, you’ll have to delete something to add more apps.

Samsung tells CNet it may “secure more memory space through further software optimisation,” which implies a belt-tightening update may be coming.

The other option, of course, is to opt for the 32-GB version of the S4, which only costs $50 more from AT&T. But that’s cold comfort if you’ve already sprung for the 16-GB model.